Greg combines his passions for nature, travel and photography to create wildlife images from around the world.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Waterton National Park Day Two...

Saturday.

I slept in til 6:30, then went out to check on what I figure
must be a fox den. When I gotto the
spot in the road and looked up, sure enough there were four foxes sitting out
on mound of the den. I was a little late in getting there, but just after I got
there, mom promptly left, then ten minutes later returned with several moles or
mice or something. What a hunter! She dropped them off at the den for the
babies and then left again.

Saturday morning we went up the hill again and didn’t see
much. It was too hot out for the animals so we only saw a herd of big horn
sheep.

In the early afternoon we found a mom and fawn so we
photographed her for a bit. Gaye went to meet our friends for lunch and by the
time I finished talking to her, mom and baby had given me the slip, so I went
for lunch. Our friends went home and Gaye and I went up the hill again. This
time we saw the cinamon bear and black bear baby that our friends saw and
managed to get a couple cute pictures of them. We came back into town for
supper, then decided to go up the hill one more time. The light was getting dim
and we hadn’t seen anything. We were almost out of light and ready to give up
when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a couple tiny black objects high up
in the tree. I asked Gaye to stop and said there’s bear cubs in the tree. She
stopped right under the tree and we were trying to look up to see them but were
at a bad angle as they were directly above us. As she was telling me that they
weren’t bear cubs, I looked at the bottom of the tree and sure enough, not ten
feet away was mom. And there weren’t two cubs in the tree, there were three. So
there I was with a camera and lens set up to photograph bears at 100 yards and
they were ten feet away. My lens doesn’t even focus until the 18’ mark. Luckily
I had another camera at my feet and got a few shots as the cubs came down the
tree.

The extra evening drive paid off and the timing was perfect. With the light dying we took pictures of the bear family for a few minutes, they disappeared into the bush, the light was gone and satisfied with our sighting we headed back to the hotel. I'm looking forward to checking out the fox den tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will have a chance to see the kits again.